The Smilodon

Chapter 3

Amin walked towards the back of the plane. Michael could hear him trying to rally other passengers to take on the hijackers.

“There are only three of them,” he said. “We could take them. Come on!”

No one seemed to want to budge.

The plane continued to descend, sometimes swerving violently but descending nevertheless. Then, the other engine shut down. With power off, the air conditioning system stopped working. It started to get very hot inside, very quickly. The plane continued gliding rapidly towards an inevitable crash landing in the ocean.

Michael closed his eyes as if that would wake him up from this nightmare. This is really happening! I could die here today. Is this all my life was meant to be?

He started to pray for his family and himself as he took the crash landing position.

They finally hit the surface of the Indian Ocean, with an initial gentle tap followed by two violent bumps. Michael lost consciousness on the first violent bump. On the second bump, the plane tore into several pieces.

∞∞∞∞

Michael Matiku was never to regain consciousness. On 23rd November 1996, Ethiopian Flight 961 lost 125 passengers and crew including the three hijackers. The crash had only 50 survivors and Michael was not one of them. He left behind a widow and two sons. Jonathan aged ten and Richard aged three.

When he died, it signaled the end of what was, except for their distant mother, a relatively happy childhood for both boys. The crash took away whatever minute portion of their mother's attention they were getting before. So distraught and depressed, Joyce retreated to herself, spending more and more time alone.

To Joyce, the loss of her husband was, to a significant degree, the loss of her identity. Who was she without him? What sort of life would she live? It didn’t take too long for his death to start affecting the household financially. She was a housewife. Without her husband’s income, she could not support the lifestyle she was accustomed to. She was used to being taken care of. She had to look for a job but she had no experience and a Business Diploma that she had never used. To further aggravate the situation, Jonathan’s private primary school, considered one of the best in Dar Es Salaam was also one of the most expensive and he still had two more years to go in it.

Michael's younger brother and only sibling, Brandon, offered to help Joyce with school fees but Jonathan had to move to a more affordable school. As for Richie, he stopped going to nursery altogether waiting for the right age to start standard one. That was also two years away. Brandon had two sons of his own and a daughter. The sons were ten and seven years old while the daughter was two-years-old. He had not graduated from University like his very academically inclined brother but got involved in the trading small volumes of foodstuffs in his late teens after high school, with relative success, later diversifying with a modestly successful hardware store that allowed him to support his tight-knit family.

Jonathan moving schools was one of many lifestyle changes that were made by the Matikus. They moved into an unfinished house that Michael had been constructing and sinking all his savings into because they could no longer continue to occupy company housing – although BP had allowed them to continue living there for a while, past the time allowed by policy. Their new home had no ceiling board, only corrugated sheets that collected Dar Es Salaam’s scorching heat during the day and dutifully tortured them with it at night. It initially had no doors or windows so they had to secure two rooms with doors, burglar bars and mosquito gauzes on the windows for the rooms to be used by Joyce and her sons as well as the kitchen that doubled up as the dining room when they put a Mkeka on the floor during meal times.

Because the bathrooms and toilets were not finished, an outdoor pit latrine had to be constructed hastily marking the completion of their new accommodation. It was a far cry from the executive housing of British Petroleum. To earn a living, Joyce with the help of Brandon, got a job as a receptionist at a small construction firm that often did business with Brandon.

Joyce was no longer the socialite and toast of the neighbourhood that she once was when Michael was around. She resented her situation deeply and tried to resist it with repeated attempts at keeping appearances - at her sons’ expense, spending the little money that she earned on clothes and socializing while often skipping meals at home or simply getting a loaf of bread and telling Jonathan to prepare tea for dinner. Her denial blinded her from seeing the pain and abandonment that her boys were enduring.

Jonathan had to grow up fast to adapt to the changes that were happening around him. After school, he would go to his uncle’s house to have lunch and pick up Richie who now spent the day there because Joyce would be at work. They would then go home together. As brothers, they grew closer.

Jonathan finished primary school two years later and was selected to join a public boarding school in Coastal Region, an hour’s drive from Dar Es Salaam. Richie was also about to start primary school. Next to losing his father, leaving Richie to go to boarding, was one of the most painful experiences Jonathan had had at that point in his life. Uncle Brandon would continue footing the bill for his education and expenses and help out occasionally at home. Richie started crying the night before he was to leave for school. As he was about to depart the following morning, Richie would not let go of him as they embraced. They both sobbed as a deep sense of loss engulfed them yet again.

At this tender age, deep in Jonathan’s psyche, a picture of what type of woman his heart would yearn for was already imprinted and it was what his mother wasn’t.

∞∞∞∞

Jonathan and Emilie's first encounter was online in a f*******: debate initiated by Marcus, Jonathan's best friend that he had met at University. It was late February 2014 and Jonathan had just finished writing an article for The Daily Times, an English daily that he worked for full time as a sales executive, selling advertising space and part-time as a writer with a weekly column called 'The Dot Com Corner' that focused on technology news and updates. Although he chose to major in Marketing at University, Jonathan had developed a keen interest in Information technology and telecommunications, as the industry grew in Tanzania and globally, and so, would research as much as he could on it and share with his readers every Saturday.

As soon as he finished writing inside his small apartment on the laptop given to him by his uncle Brandon after he had graduated from University, he checked his f*******: account for any activity. He scrolled down his feed and noticed a lot of activity in a f*******: group that he was a member of. It was called Team Tanzania, a group set up for anyone in Tanzania to join and socialize online. It had about fifty thousand members and there was a significant number of expatriates in it who used it to get general advice on how best to adjust to living in Tanzania or where to get the best services or products etc. Jonathan had been encouraged by Marcus to become a those debates, had just posted a photo of a book that Jonathan recognised as it was he who had shared the member, “not to miss out on the crazy debates”. Marcus, in an apparent effort to start one of photo and background story with Marcus a while back.

It was a photo of a book created by the Danish unemployment fund, Min A-kasse, in 2012. The fund, which provides unemployment insurance to its members, had been battling with a lot of bureaucracy so it conducted a research and discovered that unemployment rules in Denmark had exploded from 421 pages in 1951 to a massive 23, 675 pages by 2011

To illustrate the magnitude of the problem to the politicians who were creating it, Min A-kasse printed out all the rules, forms, and regulations, creating a book that was 134 centimetres thick and weighed 64 kilograms.

Although the size book was quite a sight, the flurry of conversation was caused more by the caption that Marcus had put underneath the photo. He had written, "Finally, a guide to understanding women"

All hell broke loose. Everyone and their neighbour’s aunty wanted to offer an opinion, with Marcus’ female friends vehemently attacking the post, albeit in what seemed to be a pretty friendly exchange.

Marcus remained adamant, "women are just too difficult to understand," he wrote on the thread. "Women will tell you they want an emotional connection, chemistry, respectfulness, romance, honesty, ambition but line up to date the biggest asshole in the room. They love bad boys. They don't really know what they want. I mean, do you want an adventure or do you want a meaningful relationship? Guess who they blame when the adventure ends – all men that have existed."

“@Marcus, you are being no different then, you are generalizing women the same way women generalize men,” wrote someone called Emilie Mosha. "I think most women want more or less the same thing. Yes, they do want emotional intimacy. They also want someone compassionate, honest, and ambitious. It's not unreasonable to want that and wanting that doesn't make you complicated."

“@Emilie, if that's what women want, why is it that when women become successful their main criteria suddenly becomes someone more successful than them? What happens to chemistry and emotional intimacy then? There could meet a nice, compassionate and trustworthy guy but since he's just a driver, he's not worthy. You don't see that with men. A billionaire could marry a waitress. This actually kind of explains why some successful women remain single and if you do get into a relationship with any one of these successful types, they will emasculate the s**t out you. They will walk to work with your balls in their handbags every day. You'll see them start undermining you in small subtle ways, making decisions without consulting you, especially if that decision involves money they earned – it will be death by a thousand cuts until your soul finally leaves you," wrote Marcus

“@Marcus, that’s a bit extreme don’t you think? And you are generalizing again. Not all nice, compassionate guys are guys you automatically fall for. There has to be some chemistry and perhaps some intellectual connection. You have to be able to have a meaningful conversation. It’s just that men can’t stop searching for the next conquest and any successful, self-respecting and self-aware woman would not accommodate being used like that. I think men want control, control so they can do what they want, that’s why they are threatened by the success of the woman.”

“@Emilie, now I think it’s you who’s generalizing,” Jonathan finally wrote, entering the fray, “there are a lot of us who would cheer a woman on to pursue their dreams and be the best they can be. If we are partners, her success is OUR success just as my success would be OUR success”

“@Jonathan OK fine, not all, some.”

"I think relationships should be about giving, not just taking. No one is perfect. If you love someone, focus on expressing that love instead of on "what have they done for me lately". I'm not saying that you should allow yourself to be taken advantage of but if both parties also focused on giving, things would be easier because imperfections are minimised,” Jonathan added.

“@ Jonathan, I wish more men would think that way,” wrote Emilie.